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The unemployment rate for those with college and advanced college degrees is expected to hit a record high, according to economists. "In a flood everyone gets swept away," said Lawrence Mishel, an economist with the liberal Economic Policy Institute. The shift illustrates the quickening of a trend that began in the 1980s and that has made college-educated workers more vulnerable to layoffs. And those who are able to get jobs may need to compromise. "[The] next job may not have the title you want or the pay you want," said John Owen, a Virginia branch manager for Robert Half International, a national firm based in Menlo, Calif., that places accounting and finance professionals.

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The worst decade for the economy in modern times has economists rethinking fundamental rules about growth. There was zero net job creation between the end of 1999 and the end of 2009, and middle-income households made less in 2008 than they did in 1999 when figures are adjusted for inflation. "This was the first business cycle where a working-age household ended up worse at the end of it than the beginning, and this in spite of substantial growth in productivity, which should have been able to improve everyone's well-being," said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank.

Faced with warnings that the recession could slide into a lengthy period of deflation and stagnation, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama is preparing to ask Congress for as much as $310 billion in tax cuts as part of his huge stimulus package. Data are painting an ever-darker picture of the economy, with a report on U.S. jobs that is scheduled for release this week expected to show that at least 500,000 jobs disappeared in December.

As tax preparers gear up for the upcoming tax filing season, they should be aware that a number of credits and other items that were scheduled to expire -- or had already expired -- were extended by the Tax Extenders Act of 2008. The act also increased the alternative minimum tax exemption amount and made changes to the rules regarding the AMT minimum tax credit. Moreover, numerous changes affecting individuals were made in regulations and other guidance issued by the Internal Revenue Service, as well as in decisions by the Tax Court and other federal courts.

Some of the biggest names on Wall Street had doubts about the legitimacy of Bernard Madoff's investment business, even discreetly steering customers away from him, but they did not reveal their suspicions to regulators, U.S. bankers said. Executives were reticent in their criticism of Madoff because they were afraid of offending clients who were investing with him.

Arthur Levitt Jr., chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1993 to 2001, says that the Bernard Madoff affair highlights a need to update and enhance the regulatory approach for new, more complex products, investment strategies and markets. Levitt says that a "laser-like focus on risk assessment" is needed. "A regulatory agency is not omniscient. Its leadership must identify the biggest possible risks to investors and to the entire system and focus resources on these areas," he writes.